But even a bird of such immensely
proportionate strength may be seriously troubled by them. A case in
point may be cited. A dog retrieving a scrub fowl, which had fallen in
the vicinity of an "Ahm-moo" tree, emerged with it entirely enveloped
with the seeds and adhering rubbish, and itself almost helpless from a
similar cause. In this happy chance the seeds were eventually widely
distributed. If the glutin is provided to prevent birds consuming the
kernels, then the object is perfectly served; otherwise no very
satisfactory reason is apparent why the tree should be invested with the
means of destroying even humble forms of life. Is this one of the "lost
chords" in the harmony of nature?
THE CREEPING PALM
Perhaps the most impressive feature of the jungle--that which takes fast
hold, clings most tenaciously, and leaves the most irritating
remembrances--is what is known as the lawyer cane or vine (CALAMUS). It
is a vegetable of tortuous ambitions, that defies you, that embarrasses
with attention, arrests your progress, occasionally envelops you in a
net work of bewildering, slender, and cruelly-armed tentacles, that
everywhere bristles with points, that curves back on itself, and makes
loops and wriggles; that springs from a thin, sprawling and helpless
beginning, and develops into almost miraculous lengths, and ramifies and
twists and turns in "verdurous glooms," ascends and descends, grovels
in the moist earth and among mouldy leaves, clasps with aerial rootlets
every possible support, and eventually clambers and climbs above the
tallest tree, twirling its armed tentacles round airy nothings.
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